Thursday, May 31, 2012

for all of you guys who still keep coming back to read this blog. I have actually had more hits this month (5,040) than any other single month since I began this blog in December 2004.

that it's the end of May and I haven't had an alcoholic drink this year (yet)

that I actually took some action and filled out a job application yesterday. My income is way down the past 3 years and I've been running negative finances. It can't go on forever like this. So, I'm having to get into action.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

that we read Bill's Story yesterday. Here's a few passages that I identify with .....

"My drinking assumed more serious proportions, continuing all day and almost every night." (that was me!)

"Mercifully, no one could guess that I was to have no real employment for five years, or hardly draw a sober breath." (that was me!)

"The remorse, horror and hopelessness of the next morning are unforgettable. The courage to do battle was not there. My brain raced uncontrollably and there was a terrible sense of impending calamity." (sounds like my bottom!)

Sunday, May 27, 2012

I think that many oldsters who have put our AA "booze cure" to severe but successful tests still find they
often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA—the development of much more real maturity and balance (which is to say, humility) in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God.

Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for top approval, perfect security, and perfect romance— urges quite appropriate to age seventeen—prove to be an impossible way of life when we are at age forty-seven or fifty-seven.

Since AA began, I've taken immense wallops in all these areas because of my failure to grow up,
emotionally and spiritually. My God, how painful it is to keep demanding the impossible, and how very painful to discover finally, that all along we have had the cart before the horse! Then comes the final agony of seeing how awfully wrong we have been, but still finding ourselves unable to get off the emotional merry-go-round.

How to translate a right mental conviction into a right emotional result, and so into easy, happy, and good living—well, that's not only the neurotic's problem, it's the problem of life itself for all of us who have got to the point of real willingness to hew to right principles in all our affairs.

Even then, as we hew away, peace and joy may still elude us. That's the place so many of us AA oldsters have come to. And it's a hell of a spot, literally. How shall our unconscious—from which so many of our fears, compulsions and phony aspirations still stream—be brought into line with what we actually believe, know and want! How to convince our dumb, raging and hidden "Mr. Hyde" becomes our main task.

I've recently come to believe that this can be achieved. I believe so because I begin to see many benighted ones—folks like you and me—commencing to get results. Last autumn [several years back - ed.] depression, having no really rational cause at all, almost took me to the cleaners. I began to be scared that I was in for another long chronic spell. Considering the grief I've had with depressions, it wasn't a bright prospect.

I kept asking myself, "Why can't the Twelve Steps work to release depression?" By the hour, I stared at the St. Francis Prayer..."It's better to comfort than to be the comforted." Here was the formula, all right.

But why didn't it work?

Suddenly I realized what the matter was. My basic flaw had always been dependence - almost absolute
dependence - on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security, and the like. Failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and specifications, I had fought for them. And when defeat came, so did my depression.
There wasn't a chance of making the outgoing love of St. Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and almost absolute dependencies were cut away.
Because I had over the years undergone a little spiritual development, the absolute quality of these frightful dependencies had never before been so starkly revealed. Reinforced by what Grace I could secure in prayer, I found I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA, indeed, upon any set of circumstances whatsoever.
Then only could I be free to love as Francis had. Emotional and instinctual satisfactions, I saw, were really the extra dividends of having love, offering love, and expressing a love appropriate to each relation of life.

Plainly, I could not avail myself of God's love until I was able to offer it back to Him by loving others as He would have me. And I couldn't possibly do that so long as I was victimized by false dependencies.

For my dependency meant demand—a demand for the possession and control of the people and the
conditions surrounding me.

While those words "absolute demand" may look like a gimmick, they were the ones that helped to trigger my release into my present degree of stability and quietness of mind, qualities which I am now trying to consolidate by offering love to others regardless of the return to me.

This seems to be the primary healing circuit: an outgoing love of God's creation and His people, by means of which we avail ourselves of His love for us. It is most clear that the current can't flow until our paralyzing dependencies are broken, and broken at depth. Only then can we possibly have a glimmer of what adult love really is.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Motivation has become a popular word nowadays. There are motivational coaches and speakers, and motivational books and articles. What is it actually, and why do you need it?

Motivation is a driving force. In order to accomplish anything, you need a driving force, otherwise nothing will happen. A wish is not strong enough to make you take action. A wish is a weak desire. Only a strong desire can drive forward, to act and accomplish aims and goals.

In order to get motivated, you need to know exactly what it is that you want, to possess a strong desire, and to be willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish your goal.

More than often there is lack of motivation or only a short-lived one. How many times have you started enthusiastically a weight loss program, began a bodybuilding or aerobics training program or started to learn a foreign language, only to stop after a short while? Few people possess enough willpower and self-discipline to go through to the end with what they begin (this is one of the reasons I have written the book "Will Power and Self Discipline").

It easier to show motivation in connection with a subject that is dear to you. If you desire something, but you don't feel motivated enough to act, this means that the desire is not important enough. To be motivated to take action and do something in respect to your desire, you need to possess a really strong desire.

Motivation has much to do with the emotions and the imagination, which means that if you want to increase it, you have to work on your feelings and imagination.

Tips to increase your motivation:

1. Think, meditate and find out whether you really want to achieve your desire, and whether it is worth the effort and time.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

that I've slowly learned (in recovery) not to exxagerate the facts. I have always been proficient at this. Now, when I catch myself doing this, I have to stop and correct my thinking and speaking.

that a young man asked me to be his sponsor yesterday. Without hesitating, I agreed. But for some reason, I felt it necessary to tell him that although I have 4 sponsees right now, I'm not working steps with any of them. In retrospect, there was absolutely no reason for me to say this. I must examine why I said it. Well, I know why. I wanted him to know how damn busy I am, when in reality, I'm not.

for awareness of some of the defects in my thinking that need adjusting

Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It is a way of entering into the quiet that is already there - buried under the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day.~~ Deepak Chopra

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

that one of the meetings I attend every week is where we read the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I occasionally like to use quotes from that book. Here is a bit of what we read yesterday...

"Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks - drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery."

for my life of travelling to so many countries, but really it's the people I got to know and work with that made it special. I've put this on my list before but it was such a huge portion of my life for so long, it's something I often toss around in my brain. I think I remember most of the events that occurred but I'm sure I've forgotten many of the people.

Write your Sad times in Sand, Write your Good times in Stone.- George Bernard Shaw

Sunday, May 20, 2012

"I
thought for a long time that boundaries were like rules I made for other people
to follow. But I never really had much luck in getting people to do what
I think they should do. It wasn't till I came to AA that I learned that
boundaries are really agreements I make with myself. It's the commitment
I make to myself about what I will do if a particular situation happens again
-- whether it's with the same person over and over, or the same situation but
with different people. The boundary is the agreement I make with myself,
not a rule for them. And it doesn't always have to be a big exit or
something. It can be as simple as a smile and changing the subject.
But my boundaries never started becoming firm until I learned that they weren't
about making other people do -- or not do -- something. It was about what
I would do -- or not do. When I got that, that's when my boundaries
started working. That's when they became real. And I got
better."

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

for a spiritual experience that came just when it was supposed to. "Quite often friends of the newcomer are aware of the difference long before he is himself. He finally realizes that he has undergone a profound alteration in his reaction to life; that such a change could hardly have been brought about by himself alone."

If you know me, you know I am totally passionate about my gratitude for being sober AND in recovery. This morning, however, I have written enough.

Deal with it. (LOL)

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.- Muhammad Ali

Monday, May 14, 2012

I neglected to post anything here yesterday about my Mother. She died in 2008; this picture is from 1994.I miss her and think of her often. There was a time in my life that I thought I'd be better off without her. I was so damn selfish then.

I'm not that person today.

Thanks Mom, for all you taught me.

todAAy i AAm grAAteful & thAAnkful

for the ease with which I seem to have picked up on some level of spirituality; it happened at just the time it was supposed to happen and that's why I'm alive today

for the concept of Karma

that I can accidentally help someone just by talking; I guess we never know .....

that results aren't as important as the action

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What? You too? I thought I was the only one."

Saturday, May 12, 2012

A man is waiting for his wife to give birth. The doctor comes in and informs the dad that his son was born without a torso, arms or legs. The son is just a head! But the dad loves his son and raises him as well as he can, with love and compassion.

After 21 years, the son is now old enough for his first drink. Dad takes him to the bar, tearfully tells the son he is proud of him and orders up the biggest, strongest drink for his boy. With all the bar patrons looking on curiously and the bartender shaking his head in disbelief, the boy takes his first sip of alcohol.

Swoooosh! Plop! A torso pops out! The bar is dead silent; then bursts into whoops of joy. The father, shocked, begs his son to drink again. The patrons chant, "Take another drink!"

The bartender continues to shake his head in dismay . Swoooosh! Plip! Plop! Two arms pop out.The bar goes wild. The father, crying and wailing, begs his son to drink again. The patrons chant, "Take another drink! Take another drink!"

The bartender ignores the whole affair and goes back to polishing glasses, shaking his head, clearly unimpressed by the amazing scenes.

By now the boy is getting tipsy, but with his new hands he reaches down, grabs his drink and guzzles the last of it. Plop! Plip! Two legs pop out. The bar is in chaos.

The father falls to his knees and tearfully thanks God. The boy stands up on his new legs and stumbles to the left then staggers to the right through the front door, into the street, where a truck runs over him and kills him instantly. The bar falls silent.

stuff about me

A POSITIVE ATTITUDE MAY NOT SOLVE ALL OF MY PROBLEMS,
BUT IT WILL ANNOY ENOUGH PEOPLE TO MAKE IT WORTH THE EFFORT.
I am an
alcoholic and a
sarcastic smart-ass.
I am recovering from the alcoholism.
My first and only sobriety date is September 5, 2003.